Author Archive

While Cooperstown geared up for the induction, I headed to Pennsylvania. Sally McMurry, a prof at Penn State has been working on a state-wide project funded by PennDOT to document farms. Her goal is to develop a context to evaluate farmsteads for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. The idea is that some farms may be eligible not for their architecture (fancy buildings or technological wonders) but because they exemplify an agricultural theme. One of the most tangible benefits of listing is that incoming producing property is then eligible for a tax credit for work done to the buildings according to the Sec. of the Interior’s standards. Ideally, farmers could get money for keeping and using historic buildings! I worked for five days with Sally and Diane Wenger in Lebanon County, PA. I met one very mean bull, two bats, a snake, and lots of more friendly farm animals; got zapped on a electric fence trying to document a particularly large 18th c. barn (turns out the tape measure I have using conducted electricity); and saw more corn cribs, manure lagoons, and machine sheds than I had imagined possible in such a short period to time. I also met some great farmers who were willing to talk with three women who arrived with no notice and wanted to poke around the barns, farmhouse, and fields!

Cindy filling out the form

Each farm was recorded in three ways: through photographs, a site plan, and a lengthy form that required a full description and dating of every building and landscape feature on the property. I took a few pictures and drew one site plan, but most of the time I filled out the form (wearing my CGP hat, you’ll note). Hopefully when Sally gets back to Happy Valley to enter everything in the database, which will eventually go on-line, she’ll be able to follow my notes!

Like you, summer is a time for the faculty to see new places and try new things. I spent the past week in Butte, Montana, for the annual meeting of the Vernacular Architecture Forum. The first thing I learned is that it is very hard to get to Butte, as there are only two flights into the airport each day. A rain delay in Philadelphia led to an 8.5 hour layover in Salt Lake City. I turns out the Mormons know how to do tourism. They run a free shuttle from the airport to Temple Square where you can take a tour, visit the museum and two historic houses, listen to a concert, and get something to eat. Interestingly, although people were much shorter in the past, both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were quite tall, something pointed out to me on two separate occasions.

Butte itself, and southwestern Montana generally, are really fascinating places. If you take American Material Culture II next spring (or even if you don’t) you will hear lots about my trip. Museum visits included Mai Wah (a former Chinese noodle parlor) and the Dumas brothel, not to mention the whole town of Nevada City, which was created much like our own Farmers’ Museum. Just as importantly, the VAF plans tours of privately owned buildings and collections that aren’t normally open to the public. This year these including all sort of buildings related to the mining of cooper and gold, as well as the residences and community buildings that supported the miners. I even got to tour a new 3,000 sq. ft. house built inside a grain storage bin!

Butte landscape with headframe for taking people to and ore from the underground mines

One of the really interesting things about this area is the relative blurring between present and past. Mining was still going on in Butte through the 1980s, and the whole town suffers from environmental and human degradation as a result of it. As people there think about preserving the material remains of their past, they are also trying to figure out how to live in the present and the role that heritage tourism may or may not play. The keynote speaker at the VAF conference focused on the dangers of romanticizing the gritty history of Butte to make it more tolerable. In places like Virginia City, which hit its gold peak in the 1860s, on the other hand, it is hard to discern the real (authentic) from the created tourist environment. Below is a picture of tourist cabins created by Charlie Bovey in the 1950s from military barracks he brought to Virginia City and decorated with false fronts painted with the names of real businesses that used to exist in the town. Ironically, this village has now reached an age that it is historic in its own right!